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Why Red Dead Redemption was so briefly available for Xbox One

Rockstar Games' Red Dead Redemption -- a brutal western tale of vengeance and obsession, and one of the most popular open world games of the last decade -- is coming to Xbox One's backwards compatibility scheme. The only hitch? Microsoft didn't want anyone to know -- and yet some gamers managed to download it anyway.

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The Xbox 360 version of the 2010 action epic was briefly playable on Xbox One over the weekend, with players reporting that it ran flawlessly through the emulated system. However, access to the game was removed late on Sunday and it's back to being unplayable (unless you still have a 360 set up, of course).

Microsoft giveth, and Microsoft taketh away? Not quite. The reason given for the unexpected availability and sudden retraction was that the company is testing the game for future backwards compatibility release, and, well, something went wrong. "Microsoft tests all Xbox 360 games with our emulator to ensure a quality experience across a breadth of titles," Xbox Live director of programming Larry Hryb posted on Reddit after fans were, understandably, voicing their disgruntlement at the situation. "Due to an error, some of the games currently in test were accidentally made available. We have since removed access to those games, and apologise for any confusion this may have caused. We will have more information on upcoming releases soon."

Even before the removal of the game, players had to jump through some hoops to get their cowboy thrills. First, they would need to have purchased the digital version of the game from the Xbox Live store, and be following a friend who also owned the game. Then, by going through that friend's play history and selecting Red Dead Redemption, they would be taken to the game's store page, and given the option to launch the game. This was undoubtedly a glitch, as Hryb said. Anyone who owned a physical copy of the game was unable to simply insert the disc and play, as is possible with most backwards compatible titles.

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The real question now though is when Red Dead Redemptionwill be available to play on Xbox One. The game has been one of the most requested since Microsoft announced backwards compatibility at E3 2015, but has yet to make an appearance on the service. There are ongoing rumours that Rockstar is prepping a sequel too -- could the presence of a backwards compatible version of the 2010 game be planned as a bonus for any hypothetical follow up, similarly to Fallout 3 coming with Fallout 4?

The range of backwards compatible titles expands roughly monthly, and is archived here, though Microsoft is no longer announcing when new titles are added. Instead, Xbox 360 games that are owned digitally will automatically appear in the Xbox One dashboard when they're available.